Le Phédon de Platon traittant de l'immortalité de l'âme

Plato. Plato’s Phaedo discussing the immortality of the soul, presented to the most Christian King Henry II of that name, upon his return from Germany.
Paris, Sébastien Nyuelle. With Royal privilege for ten years. 1553.

Quarto of (4) leaves, 350 pp., (1 leaf).
Overlapping vellum, smooth spine. Old binding.

219 x 155 mm.

First French-language edition of the Phaedo, a fundamental work by Plato presenting the main points of his doctrine.

Here translated from the Greek into French by Louis Le Roy (1510-1577), “the greatest French Hellenist.”
Brunet, IV, 701; Graesse, V, 324.

Louis Le Roy, known as Regius, is one of the most overlooked figures among the “second generation humanists.”
This man, who seemed to have lived on the edges of fame, especially in his relations with Du Bellay and the Pléiade, appears in retrospect as the greatest French Hellenist and as the one who introduced, to a wide audience, the political works of Antiquity.
An excellent translator, in many ways superior to modern translators, he essentially chose the intermediate field between morality (Isocrates and his speeches to young princes), philosophy (Plato: Timaeus, Phaedo, Symposium), and politics (Demosthenes, Plato
and Aristotle).

In this work, the main participants in the dialogue are: Socrates, Phaedo, Simmias, and Cebes. Here they are in the cell, where Socrates, the victim of the reaction of the sophists he fought against and condemned to death as a corrupter of youth, awaits the jailer to bring him the hemlock. Around him gather his disciples and friends. After establishing that a true philosopher cannot fear death, Socrates raises the question of the survival of the soul and its destiny. Socrates is immediately invited by his friends to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, and this serious issue occupies most of the dialogue.
Offering a marvelous and symbolic vision of our world placed within the Universe as a whole, Socrates engages in brilliant cosmological hypotheses. But time is running short: Socrates retires to another room to take his bath, then calls for the jailer who brings him the hemlock. Having drunk it with perfect serenity, Socrates lies down on his couch; but before dying, he says to Crito: “We owe a rooster to Asclepius: pay it, do not forget!” Such were his last words. Socrates, who had promised to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius (Aesculapius) if he recovered from an illness that afflicted him, felt obliged to fulfill his promise, as death brought him liberation from his illness along with rest.

This first French-language edition of the Phaedo is the work of Louis Le Roy (1510–1577), considered “one of the outstanding figures of Renaissance humanism.”
His teacher was Guillaume Budé, about whom he would later write a biography.
“Quick and inquisitive mind, he ranks among the most enthusiastic Hellenists of his time.”
Friends with Joachim Du Bellay, the poet bestowed on him the title of “the French Plato.”

Precious, clean, and large-margined copy, preserved in its old overlapping vellum binding.